Gronsky was fair, active locally

Art Gronsky racked up an impressive list of credits during his eight decades in Newport Beach.

Some remember him as one of the city’s top sportfishermen, a preserver of local history and a champion of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum. To those who attended the Flight of the Lasers each year, Gronsky was the man who fired the gun to start the race — though the story about him almost shooting a plane out of the air once is apparently a myth, as the gun was loaded with blanks.

Frank LoPreste, one of the most renowned sportfishermen in California, remembers Gronsky in another way.

Gronsky, whose family owned the Balboa Pavilion in the 1950s, gave LoPreste his first job as a deckhand, and he later watched proudly as his former employee went on to found his own sportfishing enterprise.

After Gronsky passed away Friday at the age of 87, LoPreste — whose San Diego-based Royal Polaris is hailed as the fastest long-range sportfishing boat in the world — remembered his mentor as a compassionate leader and a keen businessman.

“One of the things Art always said was to make sure you treated everyone fair, so at the end of the day, when you looked at yourself in the mirror, you had nothing to be ashamed of,” LoPreste said. “I took a lot of Art’s principles, the way he treated customers, the proper way to do business. I took a lot of that with me as a young man.”

Gronsky lapsed into a coma Monday while on vacation in Alaska and died four days later. He had stayed active in the Newport Beach community until the end of his life, once being named Citizen of the Year by the city council, and served with the Chamber of Commerce for 60 years. Art’s Landing, the restaurant and sportfishing company he ran from 1963 to 1983, was a town institution.

Gronsky, who moved to Newport Beach from Pasadena at the age of 6, remained steadfastly loyal to his city.

As a sportfisherman, he focused on charity as well as business, taking disabled children and others from the probation department out on his boats. He joined the Newport Harbor Exchange Club, a group dedicated to fighting child abuse and upholding patriotic values, in 2001 and remained on the board until his death.

Bob Wood, a fellow member of the Exchange Club, said Gronsky’s extensive memory proved useful in planning events.

“He would be able to take an event from the past and be able to apply it to the situation in the room at the time,” Wood said. “I saw him do that a couple times in the last few months. He’d talk about something that happened in 1935. Everyone really appreciated it.”

Seymour Beek, the co-owner of the Balboa Island Ferry and chair of the Flight of the Lasers, remembered Gronsky as a dedicated volunteer who routinely helped with boat parades and other events.

“I don’t think I ever heard him say anything bad about anybody,” Beek said. “He was one of those people who was just universally liked.”

A funeral date is still pending.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].